Tag Archives: synology nas

Currently being between jobs, I figured that I should use some of my available time to tweak my home network and brush up on some skills whilst waiting for companies to get back to me.

A while back, I replaced the router provided by my ISP with one that is basically better. After getting it setup, I soon realized that it lacked one useful feature that my previous router did. It didn’t automatically register devices in a local DNS.
This was a bit of a pain so I decided to use my Synology NAS as a DNS server, as it has a package for it. I did a very rough-and-ready job at the time, just to basically store a few local addresses and forward the rest via my router to my ISP. No reverse-lookup functionality on the internal network, though.

This was all very well for a while. It did the basic job and was certainly “good enough” for a home network. However, with jobseeking taking longer than I would like and me starting to run out of things to fill the hours with, I figured that now was the time to do a proper job of it. Finish it off so it all works nicely, even if it’s a bit overkill for a home network, and to actually increase my knowledge of how DHCP and DNS work. After all, even when I am in work, I’ve never really had the opportunity to get into the network. And even if I had, playing around with a live network just to see how it works is very much a Bad Idea.
Potentially breaking my single-user home network to improve it and learn how it works is a more acceptable risk.

What it Now Does

DHCP (dynamic assigning of IP addresses) is done on the Router.

I have set registered addresses for much of my home equipment.

In some ways this is overkill, but it can be useful.

It’s good practice.

It means that my at-home network has fixed IP addresses for various devices but I can bring them elsewhere and have them “just work”.

There are (currently) three items that have purely static addresses:

The router.

An old PC running Proxmox VE as a virtual host. (I’m wanting to brush up on my VM skills as well.)

A very entry-level managed switch.

My NAS is running a DNS server, which the Router is set to give out as the main DNS server for my home network.

The DNS server will query external hostnames via my ISP’s main DNS servers but for anything on the internal-only domain, these are stored on the NAS.

Entries for internal servers.

A few (not all) bits of home gear.

Reverse DNS lookup is now implemented.

Up until now, I could only query an internal hostname to get its IP address.

Now I can also query the IP address to get the resulting hostname.

Not really essential on a home network but if I’m going to implement DNS at home, I might as well do it properly.

Next Stage

This is a step forward from what I had but still not perfect. If I have to reboot/update the NAS, or it breaks, I lose DNS resolution. Including for external sites. Not really an idea situation.

After this, I plan to implement a secondary DNS server elsewhere on the network. I am either going to use a small VM (Virtual Machine) running on the Proxmox host to run this or I shall use an old Raspberry Pi I have lying around. The latter is underpowered for any heavy lifting these days but as a backup DNS it would probably do fine.

All in all, it’s a little bit more complex than a small home network needs to be. However, it does leave everything a little more robust than just leaving it to the router.
Aside from that, the past couple of days’ geekery has given me a lot more insight into DHCP and DNS. I’d say it was definitely worth the effort.